Stoke the Fires
by KrisWitherKay
Summary: When a fire is doused to just a lone ember it could be seen as the end of something that was once great. But the ember is still powerful, it is its own flame until it loses the last of its energy, a lone ember could even burn a whole world to the ground to start over again from the ashes as long as you remember to stoke the fires.


Stoke the Fires

Chapter 1

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 **Going to apologise straight away here. This is full of sin. Not all of you will enjoy it or the way it progresses. I'm going to try and make this pretty tasteful, I'm still debating whether to include smut or not even as I write this, I'll give you readers a fair warning before that happens but it's also maybe not the kind of story you want to let people read over your shoulder. So if none of this bothers you and you're ready to dive head first in to the nearest bin, stick around I'm sure you're going to have a blast here.**

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Now that Yang had one arm, there were some things she expected to be difficult when she had the courage to think about it. Combing her hair and keeping it loose down her back was practically impossible unless someone else did it for her so she had taken to sweeping her masses over her shoulder and keeping it there. Whether it was for warmth, to cover her bandaged arm or to use as a security blanket on cold nights she really didn't know, perhaps all three.

To begin with even cutting up her food was draining for Yang, as if the energy she got from the food went right back out the window with just trying to prepare the very same food. She struggled to get dressed sometimes as well depending on what she wore, buckles and laces quickly fell out of her favour. Tying her shoes was the most embarrassing thing she had probably done in all of her short life, she didn't even want to be looked at afterwards.

This, in turn meant that Yang didn't go out very often and even if she did it certainly wasn't to exercise. She lost her muscle definition more quickly than she had anticipated and had gained weight almost painfully easily. She hadn't realised that her body had become so used to the constant activity of her Beacon days that it had become reliant on it to maintain her physique. As she stood in front of the mirror now, she could see the flab that had built. Yang's arms were looking pudgy, the elastic of her underwear nipped at her hips, she could feel her bra was a little tighter and her thigh gap was showing signs that she'd been doing a lot more than just skipping leg day. She didn't feel anywhere near as good as she had done when she exercised regularly. Even though Yang knew she was probably wrong to do so, she blamed that on her arm as well. Her body didn't need the energy that would have gone to maintaining her muscles or even her right arm as a whole but she was eating the same amount, maybe even more now that she was back home. The leftover calories just kind of sat around and made her fat.

Yang found new ways to entertain herself though, once she had successfully dressed herself in a soft, turtleneck sweater. She watched a lot of TV even though daytime television was the most sinfully boring thing ever. It was good to have on in the background if she decided to nap on the sofa or if she was traipsing about the house by herself until her dad came home from work. She had a lot of simple arm and hand exercise routines that she had been given by the doctor. Yang was to do these for maybe about an hour every day, the doctor had said something about still trying to "keep the work load even" between her arms so that she wouldn't be unfit by the time it came to getting her a prosthetic arm.

The exercises appeared to be patronisingly simple at first. Keeping her bad arm held above her head was trivial in anyone's books but when she had shouted and raved in the doctor's office and then tried to prove her point by doing the exact action, she found that she could barely move her arm at all, she couldn't even point it out in front of her, never mind point it to the ceiling. Yang had shot her own argument down and with tears in her eyes she had apologised and agreed to it all. She had also been given a few handwriting and spelling books, the kind given to five year olds. It was insulting to say the least but if she ever wanted to write anything while her right arm was out of action she would have to practice something as simple as writing her own name.

There was a confusing mix of bitterness and nostalgia every time Yang did her handwriting sessions. She could remember vaguely doing them herself the first time around. She had gotten in to quite a bit of trouble as a small child because she didn't complete her assignments on time, it wasn't that she was lazy, she was just a slow writer and she spent too much time joining her letters like the books told her to. She then got caught in a bit of a limbo when she dropped joining her letters in favour of speed and then the teachers got mad at her because she wasn't writing "neat enough". If you asked Yang now, it was all utter bullshit. She wondered if her teachers had a personal grudge against her seven year old self and what petty people they must have been to get aggravated about such a small thing.

Yang had done a good job keeping herself occupied with all kinds of little things so that she didn't have to think much about her arm or lack of it. She knew she wasn't dealing well with it at all. Yang had taken to thinking a lot about her time as a preteen, how her girl's body was turning in to that of a woman's and all the things that came with that especially her bad temper. Now that she was older and wiser, her unnecessary anger had faded and as a Huntress in training she had had countless outlets that took shape in the creatures of Grimm but in her new situation, Yang had quickly realised that those feelings hadn't gone away, they had only been swept under the rug because of a larger looming threat. But now those threats were gone, she was back home in a fully guarded town and suddenly had a lot of free time in which she was left alone with her thoughts, where she could mull things over and reach no conclusions.

Yang didn't want to think about anything really and as she fell in to her new routine of turning on the TV and laying down on the sofa she realised that none of that was going to go to plan. As the television showed her footage of grizzly bears in some nature reserve, she thought about the night she lost her arm. She remembered the feeling of her stomach dropping in to an abyss as she watched the man in the mask stab her partner and she remembered the sensation of all that that had just dropped from her rush straight back up in to her chest – her face – her _fists_. She had burned his image in to her mind, but only that. She couldn't remember what he had used to take her down but she could vaguely recall what it looked like when her arm fell away from her shoulder before she had blacked out.

Yang had come to the next morning and she instantly knew what had happened. The doctors had told her that her Aura, despite being extremely depleted had kept her alive long enough for her to be brought to the hospital. She had been under anaesthetics for quite a while once her Aura had let her go and that kept her sleeping until they were able to lower the dose and just numb the pain to allow her to wake. Once she was let off the anaesthetic Yang found that she was unable to cry, it felt like she was dreaming, like she was going to wake up any second and find out that it had all been a dream. No one had visited her aside from her father but she later found out the reasons for her team's tardiness and felt guilty about almost blaming them. Everything had turned for the worse and for her to learn it all so quickly was a big shock to Yang, it had only sunk in for real when she was taken home and her father had taken her to her and Ruby's room. She didn't know what she had expected, maybe she wanted Ruby to be in the hospital so that Yang could greet her when she came home. But Yang knew that she didn't want _this_. She didn't want to sit on Ruby's bed and watch her sleeping face not respond to her calls and she especially didn't want her dad telling her that she'd been like that since that day and there was no telling when she would wake up.

That was the moment Yang had cried. She had cried for all she was worth, however much that was. Her dad had held her tightly then and Yang was sure that he had cried with her. It couldn't have been good for him either. He'd already gone through the pain of losing the most important person in his life twice, Yang couldn't imagine what it felt like to have that almost happen again.

Yang thought more of her father in the month that she had been home since the incident. He had been nothing but supportive of her even while she had been acting like a sad sack or even on the day Ruby left and Yang had refused to see her off. She knew then that things had to change for her but it would be a slow and arduous transition. She didn't even know _what_ had to change. She had no trouble finding things that were wrong with her at that particular moment.

She had lost all of her confidence, not just as a woman but as a human. Yang didn't know if she could handle the stares if she went out in to town. The island was only small, everyone knew everyone and everyone especially knew of Taiyang's daughters, the only two that had been able to make it in to Beacon Academy since their own father had. Yang laughed dryly under her breath at how far away all that seemed now. She didn't know if she even had the right to be prideful about her accomplishments at Beacon, not after the festival, not after she had failed to save her partner and definitely not after she couldn't even face her friends when they came to the door asking her dad about her health.

But Yang herself wasn't the only person she could blame. Despite her clearly not being over the emotion impact of losing a limb, her own sister had still run off to god knows where with the remainder of Team JNPR. She could certainly blame those three who seemed to brush off the death of their teammate and partner as if it had happened on the other side of the planet. She could blame Weiss who had literally been whisked away to the other side of the planet by her father and she just went along with him, even after she had spoken so vocally in disdain about his dictatorship over her at home she barely even put up a fight, definitely didn't dare to draw her sword. But none of that measured up to the betrayal in Yang's aching heart thanks to her supposed partner. Yang was thankful that she had gotten her to safety, dying there was not an option but that was where the positives ended. She wondered how much time had actually passed before she-who-shall-not-be-named decided it would be a brilliant idea to run away to save her own skin rather than stay by her partner's side in her greatest time of need.

But what pissed Yang off the most was that she was _surprised_ by it. She couldn't believe that she had been abandoned by her own teammate despite her having a track record of running away when things got tough. Yang didn't know for certain if this was the case, but she believed that she had most likely ran away a few times from her troubles even before Yang had met her. It really showed how much Yang really knew about her. She liked to think that she knew even a little about everyone's character, Yang was a people person after all, substantially more extroverted than her own flesh and blood sister. But this time she had never been so wrong about a person. The realisation had shaken her. She could never make an assumption like that again.

How many other people had Yang been wrong about and it was just waiting to blow up in her face? She feared the worst regardless of the fact that at home there was no way for her demons to reach her. In reality, now was most likely the perfect time for Yang to make the necessary changes she needed to and to get used to them.

Yang focused back in on fluffy grizzlies plodding along leisurely on the TV as she drew up a blank on what to do.

"After spending two whole years with its mother, gaining the strength and knowledge for it to survive on its own," said the raspy voiced narrator. "The time comes for the youngster to leave its family to start its own. While the two may cross paths again they will never again be mother and son; but male… and female."

Was that Yang's answer? A message from some higher power telling her to start again? Forget about whatever relationships of the past that she may have had and re-evaluate them all anew?

Yang's revelation was cut short as she jumped at the sound of the front door opening, she never heard the motorbike.

"Yang?" Her father called. "You up, buttercup?"

She acknowledged the call with a prolonged grunt and waved her good arm over the back of the sofa. He must have already been in the living room when she lifted her arm up because he held her hand in place to stop her from hitting him accidentally. He leant over the back of the sofa and threaded his fingers in to her hair as he pressed a kiss to her temple, his beard tickling her skin.

"How are you feeling?" He asked with a hesitant smile and worry showing in his bright, blue eyes.

"I'm OK." She answered though she could tell it didn't really reassure him so she carried on. "Watching a documentary on grizzly bears. David Attenborough narrates it."

Taiyang looked a little more pleased with that. She was actually making an effort. For a couple of weeks Yang tried to avoid as much human interaction as possible and while things were still a little shaky at times, they were taking things one step at a time.

"What do you want for breakfast?" He asked while he smoothed back her bangs.

"Well I was just gonna get cereal at some point."

"I'm cooking, let me spoil you a bit." Yang let that sink in for a couple of beats, it was just what she needed to hear.

"Then can I have bacon?"

"I'll bring it over when it's done."

He left her alone again as he moved over to the kitchen and started pulling things out of the fridge. There was no door separating the two rooms so Yang was able to sit up and watch her father work. She thought more about her revelation to start over again. She wondered if her dad would think she was going crazy, if he would sign her up to therapy sessions and not just the ones that she already attended for her arm.

"Daddy?" She called and Taiyang did that typical parent thing of answering but still carrying on with the food preparation, not looking at her.

She called for him again, this time it was more of a complaint than a request. But it had the desired effect. He dried his hands on a towel and came back over to her, immediately threading his fingers in her hair again and softly sifted them down to cup her chin and cheeks in his big, warm palms.

"What is it, honey?"

"Can I call you Taiyang?"

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 **Exploring the possibilities of Yang's character now that she's been dragged to the very bottom of the barrel is pretty interesting. She has a lot of time at home and even more time alone with her thoughts. She must be going through all kinds of emotions and I can't even begin to say that I understand exactly how she would be feeling as a brand new amputee and thanks to this slight inaccuracy in my judgement of the situation I can use some equally inaccurate and unlikely plot points. These are going to crop up later in the story. I understand this first chapter is very wordy but I wanted to set the scene and solidify the idea of starting anew in Yang's mind of her own volition.**

 **I hope you liked it if you've made it this far down. Stick around for some new chapters soon, I plan to get this one done and dusted before I move on to anything else so leave a review if you've got something you'd like to mention and give it a fave and a follow if you'd like to see more! Thanks for reading.**


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